Aftermath
by chrissie0707
Summary: Finale tag for 13X23 "Let the Good Times Roll." The bunker feels different without Dean. Lifeless and cold, despite the presence of the others waiting for them in the war room. Despite Mom and Cas and Bobby, or this version of him.


_It's gonna be a loooooooooong summer. Let's see how many tags I get out of THIS finale. :P_

* * *

 **Aftermath**

* * *

"Sam."

He stands there for a while, just outside the edge of the impressive, charred imprint of Lucifer's left wing. Waiting to wake up, maybe.

Because this is a dream. A trick.

It has to be.

Dean didn't…he wouldn't…

"Sam."

He drops his gaze to the floor, vision blurry. God, he'd been so…relieved, when Lucifer died. So _free._ He hadn't anticipated that. Hadn't expected the warm, peaceful rush that flooded his body, the damn-near sense of _joy_ that came from knowing the devil was well and truly gone _._ For a moment, he'd been so overcome that he managed to forget his brother had a copilot.

And that's how this is entirely his fault.

Sam scuffs the toe of his boot through the smoking embers, scrapes away some of the char from the tile and leaves behind a smear of blackened residue on his shoe.

It wasn't a dream. This is all very, very real.

"Sam."

Jack breaks through as he finally registers the kid's voice. Sam raises his eyes, sucks in a breath at the sight of him. Jack's covered in blood; it's streaming from his nose, and a bloom of crimson stretches out from the center of his chest where he'd started to sink the archangel blade.

"Jack. God." Sam blinks to clear his vision as he reaches out, grabbing a handful of the kid's jacket. "Hey, you okay?"

Jack takes a page out of the Winchester Family Playbook and ignores the question. "What are we going to do?"

Sam takes a deep, steadying inhale, moves his hand to grip Jack's shoulder in what he hopes comes across as reassuring instead of terrified and desperate. "We're gonna go home, get you patched up."

Jack frowns, raises a slow hand to the blood around his mouth. Just yesterday, Dean shot him twice in the back to get his attention. Now, pain glazes his eyes, and he looks very much like a hurting, human boy. Like a priority. "But, Dean – "

Sam swallows, bobs his head. "I know. But first, you." He cocks his head, squeezes the kid's shoulder. "Come on."

Outside the church, Jack's bright eyes sluggishly roam the dark, quiet landscape. "Do you know where we are?"

"No." Sam pulls his cell phone from his pocket, sees a screenful of notifications, missed calls and voicemails from both his mom and Cas. The pad of his thumb hovers over "Mom," but he can't go through with it. He wants to hear her voice, but he doesn't have a clue what to say to her. Doesn't know how to tell her Dean's not coming home. He dismisses the messages, opening his Maps app instead. They're just outside of Cheyenne, Wyoming. Not horribly far from the bunker, but far enough.

Sam squints down the empty street. There are lights in the distance, maybe a mile away. He tucks his phone away, nods in the direction of the lights. "Come on."

* * *

Adrenaline keeps the pain at bay for the first couple of hours. He gets Jack cleaned up, mops the blood from his face, finds some gauze and tape and a clean t-shirt from a twenty-four-hour convenience store. Cas will patch him up properly when they get home.

He steals a car from a dark lot a few blocks down, doesn't waste time targeting the most discrete ride, just hotwires the first unattended vehicle he comes across. He gets Jack settled in the passenger seat, plots their route home on the touchscreen GPS mounted into the Kia's dashboard. They lose the soft rock radio station programmed into the presets after about an hour. Sam can't rustle up enough energy to care to find something else, just reaches out to switch the radio off entirely. They're still a couple hundred miles out of Lebanon when exhaustion claims Jack, and the kid nods off with his temple tipped against the window, his warm breath leaving a cloud of condensation on the cool glass.

That's when the stillness and the silence get to Sam, and the aches begin to settle. The ones thrumming throughout his battered body, and those less tangible pains resonating from deep inside.

* * *

The bunker feels different without Dean. Lifeless and cold, despite the presence of the others waiting for them in the war room. Despite Mom and Cas and Bobby, or this version of him.

They all look pale and stressed and haggard. Even Cas, sitting stiffly on the steps with his hands hanging limply over his knees. He doesn't look up as Sam and Jack enter, just continues to stare helplessly into the middle distance. Like already he knew Dean wouldn't be coming back with them.

His mother rushes up to him, her expression tired but hopeful, and Sam shakes his head, doesn't dare open his mouth and try to say the words. She nods with wet eyes and takes Jack, a protective arm looped around his slim shoulders as she leads him to a chair to quietly fuss over his injuries.

No one really looks at each other, and an uneasy sense of quiet settles over the room.

Sam's had enough of silence.

"How could he do this?" He scrubs his hands over his face, wincing as his fingers contact rising bruises. "How could he be so stupid?" His eyes find Castiel, staring deliberately at the floor, and anger seizes his chest. "How could you let him do this, Cas?"

Mom straightens from where she's leaning over Jack, steps forward with a hand held out like she's trying to calm a feral animal. "Sam…"

"Did he tell you?"

She flounders wordlessly, tears welling as she reaches for his arm. "Sam – "

He wrenches away, advances on Cas. "How could you let him do this?" he explodes.

The angel doesn't flinch at Sam's shout, almost like he was expecting that, too. He rolls his eyes to the ceiling before dropping them back to the floor. "Sam, you and I both know that no one _lets_ Dean do anything."

Sam clenches his jaw, shakes his head. "You should have stopped him."

Castiel rotates his head to face Sam, jaw set and blue eyes steely. "I tried. He wouldn't listen to me, Sam. Lucifer had you. There was nothing I could say."

Sam shakes his head stubbornly. "You should have said whatever you had to. _Done_ whatever you had to. Maybe – "

"Yes, Sam. _Maybe_." Cas pushes to his feet, eyes narrowed as he crosses the room to stand in front of him. "Maybe if your mother hadn't been lost in that apocalypse world for a year. Maybe if you hadn't died there. Maybe if he didn't have – " his eyes find Bobby, drop quickly back to the floor. "Lucifer had you," he repeats, not looking up at Sam. "And Dean was desperate. There was nothing I could do."

Because Dean's never more unpredictable, never more _dangerous_ , than when he's desperate.

"I know, Cas," Sam says softly. He drops his hands to his hips and shakes his head, pulls his bottom lip between his teeth.

"Sam."

He turns toward Bobby, sees so much BOBBY there he feels a pang inside. The man doesn't know he and Dean enough to care about them, but he trusts them. And in a life like the one he's had, that's not nothing.

Bobby dips his chin, steady gaze holding his. "What do we do next?"

Sam releases a breath, blinks away the hot tears threatening to spill. "Yeah." He nods, runs a hand down his face. "Yeah. You're right. Cas, can you sense him? At all?" He can't say _Michael._ That feels like an admission that Dean's gone. An acceptance of the fact they might not get him back.

If he knows his brother at all, Dean's gonna be giving that son of a bitch one hell of a fight every step of the way. Even so, he can't help remembering the state of Raphael's vessel, all those years ago, drooling nonsensically in a hospital room, a hollow shell of the man he'd been before the archangel took command of his body.

"No."

Sam rubs at his neck. His entire body hurts now, an ache in his back, an icy jab in his ribs, a dull but persistent _thump_ in his left cheek, just below his eye. "What about angel radio? It's – "

"Static," Cas finishes.

"Which means what?"

"Panic, mostly," Castiel says with a sigh. "Chaos. Sam, there are only a handful of angels left in heaven. They don't stand a chance against Michael."

The angry flush of heat returns to Sam's chest, shoving all his pain to the side. "I'm not talking about Michael, Cas. I'm talking about _Dean._ " He turns away, pushes both hands through his hair.

"Sam," Mom speaks up, her voice soft and soothing, but she keeps her distance behind him. "We'll find Dean. We will."

Sam doesn't want to be soothed; he wants to get to work. He takes a few deep, centering breaths before he drops his hands from his head, nodding determinedly.


End file.
